“You Don’t Have To Be Racist To Work Here… BUT IT HELPS!!!”
I thought it was a requirement, if an unwritten one.
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Thank you for your time, and your thoughts. I hope that your discussion with the school bears fruits. I also hope that the publicity created does not stand in the way of this, e.g. makes the school defensive or attracts unhelpful interventions from third parties.
I consider the question Tammy touches there very important: if behaviour like this is more normal today than it was at her and your school days, than what can be done to change this?
Just a sidenote, for your consideration:
zero tolerance, in the sense apparently used in the US, does seem to mean something different than in Germany. Here, showing the Hakenkreuz and the Hitlergruss is illegal (§86a StGB). Of course, schoolchildren still sometimes try to shock other people using these symbols. Of course, this behaviour is not tolerated. It could get you kicked out of a school, in the end. But this already is quite high on the level of escalation, and there is no way that the parents of the kid in question don’t get an invitation to discuss with the teacher, and quite probably the head of school. The best interest and welfare of the kid in question is of greatest concern for the school - it is, after all, an institution on education. Nevertheless, teachers would still define their stance as policy of zero tolerance: uttering and gesturing the Hitlergruss will not be ignored, and it has consequences. Which, at some point, include getting kicked out of school. But education comes first, reprimands second.
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Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment!!! You are not doing anything for free speech when you protect hate speech!! It is not protected and frankly those kids should, at the very least, be suspended. Making another person feel fearful for their safety with your words is never ok!!! If your kids were the victims in this type of talk you would flip out but if your white and your kids are white you don’t have to worry and the rest of us just have to put up with it? Think about what you are saying! Is it ok for the to walk down the hall calling my kids the n word??? Is that ok too? Please think before you say things like this! Again, hate speech is never ok!
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It’s a school, they have all the tools available which are needed to stop this.
Show them what the Nazis did. We have pictures and films. Show them the whole gruesome reality of the Holocaust. That will shut them up and make those little shits tremble in shame for what they said to their classmates.
Stop the hypocrisy when teaching about war and totalitarianism:
“War/putting people in camps/militarism/fascism is bad mm’kay … ehm except when we do it then it’s totally rad and for freedomz. Now stand up and salute the flag and don’t forget to grab a ‘support our troops’ ribbon before you leave class”
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Maybe if you’re out on the steps of city hall in a protest, but not in a school. There is no “freedom of speech” in a school. It would be heinous chaos if there were.
Guess what, you can’t cuss out teachers or flip them the bird. You can’t wear shirts with say a weed leaf or bad words or scantly clad women. When it comes to minor students, their rights have repeatedly been showed to not fully extend to their time in the school. They must conform to school policies.
From the article, the girl didn’t shout anyone down. She informed them what the fuck their gestures meant and why it was wildly inappropriate. Which she should. There is no tolerance of evil, whether that be Nazis or ISIS. One should speak up when such messed up gestures and slurs are made. “The only thing evil needs to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”
I am all for freedom of speech, but you don’t have completely freedom every where 24/7. Schools are one examples were one has to follow rules and polices.
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That is untrue. If it were true, the KKK and the Westboro Baptist Church and other such organizations couldn’t exist in the US.
As a country, Americans have chosen to allow their hateful people to legally say just about anything (restrictions: fraud, incitement, fighting words, speech integral to criminal activities, and obscenity, all interpreted about as narrowly as possible). It’s a choice that leads to some bad results (like, say, the existence of the KKK), but it also provides defenses against, for instance, being imprisoned for saying that calling Donald Trump a baboon is an insult to the entire genus Papio.
I’m conflicted about whether protecting hate speech is the best choice to make. In theory, I think the “speech is countered by more speech” is a good principle, but, in practice… My country doesn’t protect hate speech, and I think we’re doing better in that particular fight than the U.S. is. But, then, correlation does not equal causation.
I don’t know.
Anyway, I agree with everything you said in the rest of your post after that first sentence. And the First Amendment’s protections are much weaker (but not non-existent) within a school, so it probably wouldn’t protect the kids from being punished by the school for this. But, whether it turns out to be a good thing in the end or a bad thing: yes, hate speech is protected in the U.S.
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I’m not even American, but I know that hate speech isn’t a protected class of speech. “derogatory” in this case is pretty broad. Calling someone ugly is one thing. Racist remarks or symbolism isn’t “derogatory”, it’s racist, and not protected.
Those are in many ways opposing views. IMHO. We should teach our kids to react to speech they dislike with more speech - this is how the marketplace of ideas works. We should teach kids to be tolerant because hey, life isn’t fair and you can’t change everyone’s minds, so sure, “don’t sweat the small stuff” is a good life lesson. But hate speech, racism, and bigotry aren’t “opposing views”, they are, at best, attempts to demean, belittle, or otherwise promote inequality. At worst, they are an incitement to racism and bigotry which are, again, not protected actions and do, absolutely, need to be called out.
We’ve seen, with stark, deplorable clarity, what happens when a society chooses to ignore calls for racism and bigotry in the name of change or inaction. Millions suffered for that mistake in the past, and must never come to pass again.
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I’d say the movie
gets a fair offering of the cult from the seventies
Did you know her?
I think I’m clear on what you are saying, and you no doubt have a point.
I didn’t intend to compare one to the other. Maybe you missed my original comment. Or, maybe I wasn’t clear. What I intended was to give an example from my own experience of parents training kids to be the same kind of asshole that they are.
I’ve known Nazi ideators at various times in my life, they were delusional and maybe assholes.
As an adult I would not give them the time of day.
The rise in hate crime and shit-gibbons reluctance to address it is my single biggest concern
with this administration.
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Yeah I dunno. Growing up, I always preferred movies where the bad guys won, and definitely liked playing the bad guys as that became a more common option (TIE Fighter anyone?)
I think I came out okay. Pretty explicitly anti-fascist.
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You should check out the viceland doc Needles and Pins
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Nope. Even if you were right (seeing as this can be seen as incitement to violence, or like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater), perhaps we need to make an exception for displays relating to crimes against humanity. The Nazis were SO evil that anything that excites that part of the human psyche needs to be absolutely crushed. Germany has worked out an exception. We need to copy them.
It will never happen though, just like we will never do anything about gun control. And the combination of so many guns in the hands of so many nazis in this country is incredibly frightening – especially now that Herr Drumpf has clearly enabled them.
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Thanks for the excellent post. I have a little experience with restorative justice. Here’s a website in the SF Bay Area for anyone interested:
The organization is called 'Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth".
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He lives on Planet Nazi.
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Actually it is unless it is immediately inciting violence.
None of this applies to minors in schools though.
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I’m 61. When I was in 6th grade, this was in the 1960’s, I was confronted with classmates who "zieg heiled"during the Pledge , spat on me, physically assaulted me off campus, and thought it was “funny”. these same useless pieces of flesh also vandalized my home. My father was a holocaust survivor, he was also a member of the Dutch Resistance. I reported it to the Principal, who was playing with a sailboat while I did so, my parents reported it to the Principal of the school (Stone Valley Intermediate) who did jack shit all about it. This was in the San Ramon Unified School District where the John Birch Society was trying to gain control of the school board.
This is not the “new normal” it’s the same old shit normal. California is not as liberal as people would have you believe.
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Bloody hell… not this fucking ahistorical horse shit AGAIN. You are just wrong on this and I’m not even going to take the time to explain why you are wrong. Go read a damn history book.
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No, no, no… @Splynk is simply here to remind us that all bad things are left wing and all good things are right wing. /s
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You’re my hero for today!
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